Poznań Climate Change Conference Begins Dec. 1

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be meeting for 12 days to try to nail down proposals for its 2009 Copenhagen meeting, at which an ambitious political agreement on how to deal with climate change is expected to be crafted.

This will be complicated. There are 183 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (a treaty to the UNFCCC), which the U.S. did not sign. The UNFCCC itself has 192 Parties (the U.S. is a Party here). 

Under the Protocol, 37 Parties, consisting of both industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

How Will They Do It?

In addition to the obligation to adopt climate-friendly business practices, one of the easiest way to meet these obligations is for industrialized and developing countries to trade emissions with undeveloped countries.

The Protocol allows industrialized countries to meet their emission targets through trading emission allowances on a newly created carbon market. Countries that reduce emissions below their targets can sell some of their surplus allowances to other countries that have deficits. 

Companies in these countries investing in climate-friendly projects, such as reforesting the Amazon, can obtain additional carbon credits in exchange for every ton of emissions saved. These credits can be freely traded on the emerging carbon market. 

Unfortunately, the UNFCCC has received data that emissions of 40 industrialized countries with GHG reporting obligations under the Convention rose by 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2006.

For the smaller group of those industrialized countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, emissions in 2006 were about 17 percent below the Protocol’s baseline, but still growing, after the year 2000.

In Poznań, new legistlation to replace the Protocol once it expires in 2012 will begin to be determined.